I heard recently about a University graduate who was hired by a company which opened an office in Pittsburgh for no other reason than the fellow they hired didn't want to move. That says a lot for Pittsburgh and a lot for the importance for companies in being somewhere employees want to live.

Along those lines, I had an interesting exchange with someone in Memphis, Tennessee recently. We were discussing Memphis and its attributes. This person seemed to like her city, but it couldn't, in her opinion, top Pittsburgh. "I love Pittsburgh," she said, "though Memphis has its charms I can't imagine someone trading Pittsburgh for it."

This person obviously had been to Pittsburgh in recent times as it was clear any opinions she had weren't outdated. As I've discussed before, there are lots of people out there who love Pittsburgh and would love to live here if the opportunities were presented. To many of those moving here it might be the lure of an affordable market, yet here was someone in an equally affordable market who still thought well of Pittsburgh and its possibilities.

There are some out there with enough wealth that they can move here and have enough of a financial cushion that finding purposeful employment can take sometime. Still, most can't be lured by cost of living or even quality of life alone. They need an opportunity to bring them here. Its only when an opportunity in Pittsburgh can be weighed with an opportunity elsewhere that we'll get a substantial number of people looking at Pittsburgh as a real option.

For this reason, research should be done on just how well potential residents like Pittsburgh and the results presented to companies who need to be where employees want to live.

I just toured a house with some folks who I believe had been on the Deutschtown House Tour. It soon became apparent these folks had minimal appreciation for old houses and instead wanted to remove all the interior walls to create large, modern spaces. I really wish people who appreciated the antique nature of our homes could be found to live in them. I don't see much point in living like a Victorian, but I don't understand the desire to make these old townhomes look like a downtown condo with an old stairway. There's a certain charm in the antique, and unfortunately that seems lost on many of today's urban homebuyers. I'm big on city life, but there are those who are better suited to the suburbs. If you want big expanses of space, better to build new and slap in an old mantle.